The British failure to capture Point-à-Pitre was one of the seminal events of the war. Grey entrusted the night attack of 1 July to Symes. The objective was the capture of Morne Gouvernement, the fortified post overlooking the town, or at least the destruction of the town’s stores. Following Symes’s anticipated success, Grey would storm Fleur d’Épée with the remainder of the army. Symes’s force was made up of 800 men of the 1st Battalion of Grenadiers (under Lieutenant Colonel Fisher), the 1st and 2nd Light Infantry Battalions (under Lieutenant Colonel Gomm and Major Ross) and the 1st Battalion of Seamen (under Captain Robertson). There was a delay of two hours before the men moved off Morne Mascotte at 8pm. As later related by Symes, there were soon problems.
The Troops marched with the utmost Silence through deep Ravines, in Hopes of reaching the Enemy undiscovered; but our Guides, whether from Ignorance, or the Darkness of the Night, led us in Front to those Posts of the Enemy which it had been proposed to pass by and which they assured us was practicable: To effect our Purpose by Surprise became therefore impossible.
Despite this setback, at 4 o’clock in the morning Major Ross and the 2nd Battalion of Light Infantry succeeded in driving in the enemy outposts and clearing the streets of the town with their bayonets, resisting heavy fire from Morne Gouvernement. The latter post had been reinforced and Symes judged that attacking it was now ‘highly impossible’.
The general resolved to achieve his secondary objective of destroying the stores, but his men were under heavy fire both from the musketry of the defenders and the Republican ships in the harbour. He was taking heavy casualties and gradually losing control.
…by a Fatality as unforeseen as impossible to guard against we were prevented from completing what carried so fair an Appearance of Success. Our Troops, to whom you [Grey] have so strictly enjoined in Night Attacks never to fire, who have uniformly succeeded so often by a strict observance to that Rule, and who, till this Moment, had not in the Course of the Night fired a Shot, most unfortunately began to load and fire upon each other, nor could all the Efforts of the Officers put a stop to it.
The confusion was only increased by Symes himself suffering a severe wound to the right arm; he had not disclosed his orders to others. Sensing the opportunity, two senior French officers, Boudet and Pélardy, threw their men on Morne Gouvernement against the increasingly disorganised British force in the town. Captain of Grenadiers William Stewart saw his brother soldiers ‘falling before our eyes under the swords and bayonets of a merciless enemy’. Ross and Fisher, fearing the complete destruction of their battalions, sounded the retreat and, with the gallant rear-guard action of the grenadiers and reinforcements furnished by Grey, were able to bring the remnants of the force back to Morne Mascotte.
The British losses are difficult to ascertain but they must have been great. An army casualty return for the period 10 June to 3 July shows 112 killed, 330 wounded and 56 missing; Fortescue estimates that more than 80% of these losses were sustained during the attack of 1 July. Other sources suggest over 500 soldiers and seamen lost including many of Grey’s best officers. According to Poyen, ‘…two or three hundred French had put to flight two or three thousand English’. This is an exaggeration but the fighting spirit of the army was broken. Grey admitted as much, ‘…the troops had not the power in them; they were so completely worn down that they could not advance when ordered’. He did not blame them and he also stopped short of censuring Symes, who was to die from his wound. A year later, he confided to John Whyte that he believed that Symes had made a mistake in abandoning the high ground before charging into Point-à-Pitre. Officers on the scene thought Symes to be culpable. Bartholomew James accused him of not collecting his force properly before entering the town and of then ‘harassing’ his men. William Stewart agreed. The larger part of the force should have first stormed Morne Gouvernement to command the town and the failure to do this was in part due to the loss of guides, but also ‘from the want of regular plan and exact arrangement which are so essentially necessary in all attacks and operations carried on by night’.
Whatever the cause of the debacle, the failure to storm Point-à-Pitre and thus capture the whole of Guadeloupe had profound implications for British strategy in the region. Without security to windward, always the strategic centre of the West Indies, it would be impossible to extend decisive operations to take and pacify Saint Domingue.19
It was obvious to Grey that he could not acquire Grande Terre immediately and he began to withdraw his forces to Basse Terre. Here he fortified a quadrilateral position around Berville on the isthmus west of the Rivière Salée. Breastworks were constructed with embrasures for field pieces and a strong abattis formed. On 8 July, Grey wrote to Dundas stating that he needed 1,200 to 2,000 troops simply to garrison the island already under his control and 6,000 men to retake Grande Terre. Leaving 48 companies, around 1,800 men (1st Battalion Grenadiers, 1st Battalion Light Infantry, 35th, 39th, 43rd, and 65th), at Berville camp under the command of Brigadier Colin Graham, Grey returned to Martinique on the 13th. Here he revised his estimate of required reinforcements to 10,800 and also exhorted Dundas to send out civilian governors to ease his administrative burden. The minister promised over 4,500 men to sail by late September and early November and inferred that Grey would be replaced and permitted to return to England on their arrival. Reinforcements were desperately needed: the sickly and ill-equipped British army believed that it had been forgotten by its political masters. By early September there were only 1,800 effectives with over a thousand men on the sick list. Berville camp, surrounded by unhealthy swamps, was a particular concern, 300 men dying in a few weeks in August, leaving only a similar number of men fit for duty. At the town of Basseterre, Governor Robert Prescott’s force was also declining in an alarming fashion. Efforts to raise new soldiers on the islands were ultimately ineffectual. Unable to secure whites or mulattoes, Grey attempted to recruit black rangers but their number was limited to a few hundred. Grey’s misery at the deaths of so many of his friends and troops was compounded when Dundas informed him that all his decisions relating to prize money were to be annulled. ‘If this army be deprived of its prize money’, the general replied, ‘many of the officers must be ruined’.20
Anxieties regarding his reputation, or the wealth of his officers, were quickly overtaken by the deteriorating military situation in the conquered French islands. Grey’s actions were limited to Jervis’s naval blockade of Point-à-Pitre and a long-range bombardment from Berville camp. In contrast to the dramatic decline in British manpower, Hugues was able to augment his own sickly European forces with 2,000 black troops during August and early September and it was only a matter of time before he took the offensive against Basse Terre. A quick Republican attack was predicated by the need to preserve their own inactive forces from disease, the ongoing bombardment of Point-à-Pitre, and the fear of possible British reinforcements. On the night of 26 September, Jervis’s blockading squadron drifted far enough to allow Hugues to bring his men ashore under the command of General Pélardy. The landings were at Lamentin and Goyave to the north and south of the British positions. The French plan was for a three-pronged assault on Berville, a third column attacking directly across the Rivière Salée via a pontoon bridge. Following his landing at Goyave, Pélardy quickly moved on Petit Bourg where the unfortunate James Drummond of the 43rd, commanding a small group of Royalists and hospital convalescents, was soon forced to surrender. Poyen tells us that the British lost 140 men and that a further 160 were taken prisoner whilst the French losses were only eight. The treatment of the prisoners is a matter of contention. Some witnesses, notably Cooper Willyams, insist that the sick not lucky enough to be evacuated by British ships were massacred. ‘From the hospitals to the wharf was a continued scene of misery and horror, being strewed with the bodies of the sick, who were barbarously put to death as they were crawling to the shore…’ At Lamentin, General Boudet advanced without meeting resistance to just north of the camp where he joi
ned the central column under the command of Chef de Bataillon Bures, which had by now driven in the enemy outposts and crossed the Salée.21
The Republican plan had so far been well executed and Pélardy had seized extra cannon, munitions and supplies at Petit Bourg. Hugues ordered Boudet to attack Berville on the 29th with the two columns now under his united command. The Republicans had not properly reconnoitred the ground and they were beaten back from the redoubts with the loss of 400 killed or wounded. Boudet suffered a fractured shoulder. The small garrison, probably around 200 regulars and 300 Royalists, had fought for three hours with great resolve; Graham was severely wounded and his second-in-command killed. What happened next is uncertain. Poyen suggests that Graham was forced to surrender following a bombardment whilst Willyams claims that the Republicans made two more violent assaults on the 30th and on 4 October. What is certain is that, by the 6th, Graham’s force of 125 men was in no fit state to make further resistance. His losses amounted to 27 killed and 56 wounded. The remaining men of the 39th, 43rd, and 65th Regiments and the flank companies from Ireland – ‘fitter for hospital than to be under arms’ – marched out of the camp to be made prisoners of war. Many of them subsequently perished in hulks in the harbour of Point-à-Pitre. Fortescue concludes that, ‘…the records of the British Army contain no greater example of heroism than this of the dying garrison of the Camp of Berville’. A few Royalists escaped but the unfortunates who fell into Republican hands were shot or guillotined.22
Hugues marshalled his 2,000 men along the coast to the town of Basseterre, burning and looting Royalist plantations. Grey’s force was by now reduced to little over a thousand infantry fit for service and most of these troops were moved to Fort Matilda (known to the French as Saint Charles) at the southern end of Basseterre. Here, General Prescott was in a desperate state. To resist the impending Republican attack he had only around 500 men, mostly infantry but also a smaller number of marines, seamen, Royal Artillery and black corps. Offers of Royalist help were refused, either to protect them from brutal reprisals or because he believed them to be of little military value. The fortifications were in disrepair; a senior officer described the place as ‘weak and irregular’ and Prescott himself acknowledged that the works were even lacking lime to properly cement the walls.
The siege was to last for seven weeks. On the Republican side, Pélardy fell ill and was replaced by General Boudet, who vigorously opened the attack on the fort with two 18-pounders, two 24-pounders and a mortar. Local blacks helped to construct the wooden batteries. By early December, the attackers were running short of ammunition. Inside the fort, Bartholomew James bemoaned the mismatch of the two protagonists, ‘…where the loss of one man in the garrison was of more consequence to us than a hundred and fifty to the besiegers, whose force was not only excessively strong indeed, but which was increasing rapidly every hour; while sickness and havoc were every day reducing the few men that composed the garrison’. So desperate were the defenders, they were reduced to throwing glass into the ditches around the fort, ‘…well knowing they [the Republicans] did not abound in shoes and stockings’. On 9 December, Prescott believed himself to be under fire from 23 pieces of cannon and eight mortars. Making an inspection with his chief engineer, he concluded that the ‘tottering’ state of the defences enforced an immediate evacuation. All the guns at the Gallion Bastion were dismounted and the fortification a heap of ruins.
Prescott now skilfully embarked his garrison into the waiting ships of Rear Admiral Thompson. The operation was kept secret until the last possible moment and, by ten o’clock on the evening of the 10th, all the men were safely aboard without serious interruption by the enemy, who were apparently oblivious to Prescott’s intentions. The general had preserved his garrison but Guadeloupe was lost. Poyen estimates the Republican losses in the siege to have been limited to 14 killed and a few wounded. Pélardy found the fort to be in ruins and the batteries almost all out of action. He well understood his adversary’s decision to evacuate the place. Official returns show British losses during the siege as 16 killed and 82 wounded.23
Two weeks before the abandonment of Fort Matilda, Grey and Jervis, both weakened by illness and the demands of West Indian campaigning, had returned to England. The general was especially debilitated, complaining to Prescott of an attack of dysentery, ‘…if not quickly removed, I shall be laid completely fast’. Prescott was also ill. Despite the difficulties the military campaign had been, in large part, remarkably successful, a great example of excellent cooperation between the services. Even the feisty Prescott, who was not well disposed towards the navy, gave his thanks to Jervis for his support in first defending and then evacuating Fort Matilda. The ultimate failure of the expedition was due to lack of timely support from the British Government. Grey’s growing disillusionment is obvious from his correspondence home; in a letter to a friend written as he waited for confirmation of the fall of Fort Matilda, he complains that the reverse of fortune was inevitable, ‘…should not the most ample reenforcements not arrive, not by piecemeal, the first falling victims to the Murderous Climate, before the second arrives, leaving us still in a weak state, our losses will not be confined to Guadeloupe’. The enemy, boosted by the support of emancipated slaves and by British weakness, would only grow in strength. To preserve the captured islands, Grey warned, ‘…a total new and powerful Establishment must come out, with a proper commander for I am so worn down as to be no longer fit to command’.
Of the officers who had accompanied Grey to Martinique, 27 were killed or died of their wounds and 170 fell victim to yellow fever or other tropical disease. The survivors were mostly invalids. As for the rank and file, it is difficult to be precise but at least 5,000, possibly as many as 7,000, of Grey’s army were left in Caribbean graves. At Saint Domingue, of 4,000 troops who had landed there were only 1,800 alive at the end of the year. Many of the dead were raw recruits with little hope of survival, but the losses afflicted elite units including the flank companies of the Irish army. The navy suffered similarly. In the transport vessels, charged with the arduous task of landing troops, artillery and stores, more than a thousand crew had died of yellow fever. We cannot confidently state the total death toll but perhaps 12,000 British soldiers and sailors were lost in the West Indies in 1794.24
Chapter 5
The Flame of Rebellion: The Uprisings of 1795
Fears that insurrection would break out in the British West Indian colonies proved to be well founded in 1795. The fundamental problem remained the lack of significant reinforcements to stabilise and defend the region. Extra troops promised since the autumn of 1794 failed to materialise. This was in part due to misfortune – regiments gathered at Portsmouth and Plymouth were forced back by bad weather and large numbers died of typhus on the crowded transports – but the nation’s global objectives meant that resources were overstretched. Soldiers were also needed in Holland, India, Ceylon and the Cape of Good Hope. A few trickled through to the Caribbean; in December 1794, 1,780 officers and rank and file arrived at Martinique from Gibraltar.
Guadeloupe was lost, but Grey’s conquests of Martinique and St Lucia remained under British control. The two islands absorbed around half the British forces in the region. It had been Grey’s opinion, expressed in the summer of 1794, that the security of the Windward Islands demanded a garrison 11,000 strong. On Martinique, Grey’s successor, Lieutenant General Sir John Vaughan, was less optimistic, asserting that the entire British army would not suffice to first capture and then defend all the islands. The realities of warfare in the region were more obvious to men on the scene and Vaughan urged Dundas to sanction the raising of black regiments. Williamson attempted a similar initiative in Saint Domingue, offering slaves freedom for long-term service. The army had so far relied heavily on the navy to protect vulnerable ports and forts but sailors were also dying of disease and the service was under strain.1
This increasing naval weakness was exposed in January 1795 when Hugues was able t
o penetrate the British blockade and reinforce his army on Guadeloupe. The Republican commander lost a transport carrying 550 men in a sharp action with British ships, but the remaining 1,500 troops were landed at Point-à-Pitre. Hugues was not much impressed by the help he had just received, complaining to the Convention Nationale that many of the weapons and ammunition were unusable and the soldiers mediocre. The 700 men of the Bataillon Antilles were a mixture of local whites and blacks who had previously been deported to France for political reasons. They were unlikely to stand up to the English. The poor quality of the new arrivals from Europe was less important than it might have been. Hugues was now bent on raising local manpower to usurp his enemy. He was quick to exploit his improved security on Guadeloupe to sow discontent and encourage insurrection on the neighbouring British islands. Republican delegations slipped out of Guadeloupe and made for St Lucia, Grenada and St Vincent.2
The first and most dramatic revolt was on Grenada. An English eyewitness on the island, Gordon Turnbull, was in no doubt as to who had incited the French colonists and slaves.
We can more readily account for the defection of those of desperate fortunes, or of turbulent and malignant dispositions, differing only in colour from the banditti with whom they enlisted themselves, under the banner of rapine, treason and murder. Among these, there were several emissaries of the French Republic, who had, in the commotion of the troubles in the French Islands, emigrated from thence to Grenada, where, under the cloak of loyalty, and of suffering for its sake, they too easily found an asylum and were received with that generous compassion which is the particular characteristic of the British Nation.
These emissaries were eventually suspected of having ulterior motives, but they eluded capture.
Death Before Glory Page 10
